“Was she impressed?” he asks. “Does she like our wine?”

  “No idea,” I say. “But she thinks one of your bartenders is a drug dealer. Or plays a lot of Tom Petty.”

  He frowns. “She must not have tried the pinot.”

  I laugh in surprise. “Are you offended?”

  “A little,” he admits, shrugging. “It’s a double gold winner. Make sure she tries it tonight.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I say.

  For a second, we just stand there.

  He waves toward the doorway, which I’m blocking.

  “Right!” I step aside, and he breezes past, his warm, vaguely spicy scent hitting me. “I’ll see you later,” I call over my shoulder, shutting myself in my room to continue my—so far unproductive—outfit selection.

  Wool, tweed, satin posing as silk, every piece of it easily matched to every other piece, and all of it a bit stodgy professor, even my casual summer clothes. Sadie used to say my look sat at the intersection of Personal Style as a Statement About Personality and Don’t Look at My Body, which is essentially accurate.

  A quick Google search of “what to wear to a winery” reveals a plethora of the kind of bright and airy clothes that could be plucked from an Elin Hilderbrand novel. My own wardrobe is mostly creams, tans, camels, browns. I could just go with a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, but I suspect that between showing up overdressed and underdressed, the latter would be the greater sin to Ashleigh, and I want to make a good impression.

  So I swallow my pride, and put on the slinky backless black dress I bought for Peter’s and my engagement party.

  I haven’t worn it since, which is stupid, because it cost way more than I would ordinarily spend (Peter bought it) and it’s extremely flattering.

  Fifteen minutes after seven, someone knocks on the door. I’m not surprised she’s late. I am surprised she came to the door. I thought I’d have three flights of stairs to get over my hanging out with someone new nerves before I was face-to-face with her.

  It’s been years since I made a new friend. I mean, actually made a new friend, not just inherited one from Peter, or from Sadie, who’s always been more of a social butterfly than me.

  I smooth the front of my dress, a nervous sixteen-year-old about to find out whether she really scored a date to the prom, or if the other kids are about to dump pig’s blood on her.

  When I open the door, Ashleigh jumps a little, because she’d been looking at her phone.

  “You didn’t have to come up,” I say. “You could’ve texted me from the car.”

  “I drank a Pedialyte on the way over here, and my bladder’s bursting,” she says. “Plus I know basically nothing about you, so this was a good chance to find out if your house is full of surveillance equipment.”

  I blink. “Surveillance equipment?”

  “Landon and I have been taking bets on whether you’re in the FBI,” she provides helpfully.

  I squint at her. “And you think I’m in the FBI because . . . ?”

  “I don’t,” she says. “Landon does. My guess is witness protection.”

  There’s being bad at small talk, and then there’s being so reticent that your coworkers assume you’ve recently testified against a mob boss, and I never knew how thin the line between the two was.

  In my defense, Landon is nineteen years old and nearly always listening to shoegaze in his AirPods at the decibel of a launching rocket, so it’s not like there have been loads of opportunities to bond.

  “Bathroom’s this way,” I say, leading her inside.

  She gawks as she follows, apparently unbothered by the lack of surveillance equipment.

  We pause in front of the entrance to the hallway, where Miles’s room, the bathroom, and my room are tucked off of the living room. “Cute place,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say, though honestly, this is all pretty much Miles, a funky mix of thrift-store pieces from the fifties to seventies, Laurel Canyon chic.

  She shuts herself in the bathroom—quite possibly, I think, to dig through my medicine cabinet—and I go back to the kitchen for another glass of water. In college, I really took the posters that littered our dorm rooms to heart: ONE TO ONE, IF AT ALL, they read, with an illustrated beer bottle beside an illustrated glass of water. The habit stuck.

  From the kitchen I hear the bathroom door whine open, and I pad back into the living room, but Ashleigh isn’t there.

  “Do you snowboard?” she calls from around the corner, down the hallway.

  “What?” I pass through the doorway and see her not on the right, in my room, but to the left, in Miles’s. She’s wandering through it like it’s a museum, moving from the snowboard and battered hockey sticks in the corner to the plants and incense holders in the windowsill.

  “This is my roommate’s room,” I tell her.

  She’s reading the tiny text around the edge of a framed show poster, but I’m fixated on the framed photograph of Miles and Petra on his dresser. They stand in front of the lake, her arms slung around his waist, a less scruffy version of him looking down at her adoringly. She’s waifish and cute, and he’s rangy and winsome, and it’s impossible to hate this version of her, the one who made him so happy. Until it occurs to me that now she’s making Peter this happy.

  I’d always thought he and I were so good together. He was stable and reliable and driven. He had a five-year plan, and not in a boring way. We were going to go see the cherry blossoms in Japan together, visit Dubai, see the Eiffel Tower. But we were also going to put money into retirement and have monthly dinners with his family.

  In short, Peter was the exact opposite of my dad, who was occasionally a doting father but rarely a present one.

  It had taken a lot of therapy for me to stop gravitating toward emotionally unavailable men, the kind who’d get a matching tattoo with you one week, and be dating your upstairs neighbor the next. I’d been so relieved when I finally fell in love with someone who actually wanted to love me back.

  A Relationship Guy, who craved the bond his parents had. Who liked routine, and texted back in a reasonable amount of time and shared his calendar with me.

  Maybe if we’d never moved back here, we’d still be together.

  Then again, maybe in five years, he still would’ve left me for Petra. Maybe they’re every bit as destined as he’s convinced. I’m nauseated by the thought that maybe she belongs there, in that home I’d thought was mine, while I belong nowhere.

  Ashleigh points to the two and one half pairs of Crocs (yes, that’s five individual Crocs) halfway in the closet. “Excuse me,” she says. “How many Crocs does this man have?”

  “Well,” I say. “At least those and the ones I assume are on his feet at this very moment.”

  She stares at the clogs. “Service industry, nurse, or run-of-the-mill weirdo?”

  “Service industry,” I confirm; then, with a tickle of affection, “But also a weirdo. Which reminds me, we’re supposed to try the pinot tonight.”

  “How did that remind you of pinot,” she says, but as I turn to leave, I forget she asked.

  My stomach flips at the sight of the wall behind Miles’s headboard.

  I’ve never noticed it before, because I’ve only been in here one other time.

  Dozens of Polaroids are tacked in tidy columns. Tidier, I suspect, than Miles would have been. Likely they’re a holdover from his Petra era.

  Which makes sense, given that they very clearly tell the story of their relationship. Three years’ worth of birthday cakes. Three years’ worth of tiny tinsel Christmas trees. Three years’ worth of stand-up paddle-boarding, cliff jumping, sipping wine in front of a sunset, riding a share moped in front of what I assume to be the Mediterranean Sea. Three years’ grinning into each other’s mouths with their hands in each other’s hair.

  They look so happy.

  It feels intrusive to see them like this, let alone to let my coworker gawk at the evidence of his failed relationship. “We should go,” I say, quickly steering Ashleigh back into the hallway and closing the door behind us.

  Would he take her back? I find myself wondering, before seamlessly transitioning into Would I take Peter back?

  “Definitely not,” I say aloud.

  “What?” Ashleigh says.

  “Nothing!” I say. “Let’s go get wine.”

  Ashleigh follows me back to the front door, her head on a swivel. “Do you see ghosts or something?”

  “Or something,” I say.

  “Well, Vince,” she says. “You may not be FBI, but you’re definitely more interesting than all that tweed lets on.”

  “My last name is Vincent,” I tell her.

  “See?” she says. “A whole syllable I knew nothing about. You’re full of surprises.”

  “I hate surprises,” I tell her.

  * * *

  Cherry Hill, like most local wineries, is on a peninsula that juts into the vast expanse of Lake Michigan’s northernmost curve. The vineyards sprawl across gently rolling hills on either side of the long gravel road that brings us to the winery itself, all sleek glass, balsa wood, and corrugated metal. The parking lot is jammed, the gardens that encircle it bursting with colorful blooms, all tinted pinkish by the setting sun.

  Out beyond the flowers and hedges, whitewashed tables dot a grassy stretch, customers milling from the bocce court on one end to a duck pond at the other, delicately stemmed glasses in hand. Globe lights hang over the seating area, just waiting for the falling night to give them the cue to light up.

  “This place is gorgeous,” I say, climbing out of Ashleigh’s beat-up hatchback. It’s cooled down and I’m regretting not grabbing a jacket.

  She looks at me sidelong. “Haven’t you been here?”

  I guess my blatant awe gave me away. “Peter wasn’t a wine guy.”

  “Peter?” she says. “That’s your ex, right?”

  I manage a “mm-hmm.”

  Ashleigh swings her oversize bag onto her shoulder and tugs the hem of her miniskirt toward the tops of her suede knee-high boots as she starts toward the front doors. “What about your friends? None of them wine guys either?”

  What I don’t say is, we had all the same friends.

  What I don’t say is, technically, this means I had no friends. Even after all those Frank Herbert novels I read just so I’d have something to bond with Scott over.

  “Guess not,” I say. “What about you? You’ve been here before, right?”

  “Only twice,” she says. “Duke wasn’t a wine guy either.”

  “And Duke is . . . ?” I pull the door open.

  “A large horse,” she says. “What do you think, Daphne? He’s my ex-husband.”

  “I suppose I could have guessed that,” I admit, and follow her inside.

  A smell like burning cedar wafts toward us as we enter the dimly lit room. A sleek modern bar runs along the left wall, the wall behind it entirely smoked glass, massive wine casks stacked behind it and softly glowing in golden light. The other three walls are likewise glass, but these look out over the vineyards, a narrow wooden counter mounted along them so people can watch the sunset while they sip. High-tops are arranged in the middle of the room, and in the windowed wall opposite the bar, a huge slate fireplace reaches toward the vaulted ceiling, flames crackling and leaping within it.

  Ashleigh grabs my arm. “Come on—looks like those people are leaving.” She steers me to the far corner of the bar, which takes some maneuvering, because, despite the temperate weather, the inside of this place is even busier than the lawn. She slides between two middle-aged men in golf shirts to claim one of the newly vacated stools, slamming her purse onto the other one and waving me over. She doesn’t move her bag until I’m practically sitting on it.

  Underneath the hum of conversation, sexy music plays, a low, raspy voice that perfectly blends with the clatter of forks and delicate clink of glass.

  There are two people working the bar, but then a door swings open to the room hidden by the wall of casks, and Miles ducks through, carrying a wooden tray lined with glasses.

  It’s hypnotic, the intricate dance between him and the other bartenders, or sommeliers, or whatever they are. They communicate in quick phrases and subtle touches, moving aside so he can replenish their supply. One bartender swaps places with him, and, after a quick exchange, she nods and disappears through the same door Miles just emerged from.

  Despite his somewhat threadbare and hole-ridden T-shirt and work pants, he looks completely at home here, the warm glow behind the bar casting him in more of an artisanal light than a burned-out one.

  He leans across the counter to hear what a pretty redhead is saying, then laughs and grabs an open white wine from an ice bucket, twirling it a little as he pours her another glass.

  “See?” Ashleigh says, leaning in to be heard. “Hot drug dealer.”

  My gaze judders over to her, follows hers straight back to the far side of the bar. “Miles deals drugs?” I cry.

  His gaze snaps sideways at the sound of his name. He lifts his chin in greeting, a smile pulling at one side of his mouth.

  “Wait, you know him?” Ashleigh asks.

  He drops the bottle back into the ice bucket and crosses toward us.

  “Order the pinot,” I quickly tell Ashleigh.

  “I’m really confused right now, Daphne. Have you been here or—”

  Miles slides his forearms across the glossy wooden bar. “Well, well, well,” he says, just loud enough to be heard over the room’s ambient noise. “If it isn’t my adoring girlfriend.”

  7

  “Girlfriend?” Ashleigh kicks me underneath the bar.

  I yelp and scoot away from her. “It’s a joke. This is my roommate. Miles. Miles, Ashleigh.”

  He sticks his hand out to shake hers. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Charmed,” she says, suddenly a Gilded Age heiress.

  “What can I get you?” he asks.

  Ashleigh props her chin in her hand and leans forward to be heard: “What do you recommend?”

  He drags a paper menu out of a nearby cup and pushes it toward us. “Kitchen’s out of a bunch of stuff, but we still have these.” He marks three of the six small-plate options, then flips the menu and circles the wine flights, drawing scrappy little stars beside the one he recommends.

  He looks to me for approval. I look to Ashleigh. She nods and half shouts, “Whatever Miles says!”

  “I’ll be right back,” he promises, disappearing with the marked menu, stopping to murmur something to a bartender with curtain bangs before slipping through the door.

  Ashleigh swivels toward me. “So what’s this hilarious ‘joke’ about you being his girlfriend?”

  “What’s this about my roommate being a drug dealer?”

  She waves a hand. “That’s just what I call him in my mind, because of his aesthetic.”

  “His selling-prescription-bottles-under-the-bleachers aesthetic?”

  “More like eight-plants-and-grow-light-in-his-apartment. But that was before I unknowingly wandered into his bedroom thirty minutes ago. Now I have to revise his whole image in my brain castle.”

  “Do you mean ‘memory palace’?” I ask.

  “My turn to ask the questions.” Her eyes dance devilishly. I haven’t seen this mischievous side of Ashleigh before. It’s intimidating, feeling like I can’t escape her curiosity, but it also reminds me a little bit of Sadie, which sends a pang through my stomach. “Tell me about this joke, where you’re Hot Miles’s girlfriend.”

  “Hello, ladies!” the curtain-fringed bartender says, making us both jump.

  “Hi!” Ashleigh and I cheep in unison.

  “Miles will be right back with your flight, but can I get you anything in the meantime?” She flips two water glasses onto the bar and fills them from a pitcher.

  We shake our heads.

  “Well, I’m Katya, if you need anything. Just shout.” She pats the bar and saunters off.

  “So?” Ashleigh prods. “The joke?”

  “It was just about this picture.”

  She arches a brow, waiting. I give in, pull my phone out, and tap to the picture of Miles and me, avocado smeared on my face, our mouths suspiciously close. It’s more lascivious than I remembered. My stomach flutters uncomfortably.

  Ashleigh stares at it, a divot forming in her chin. “What, because you look so much like a couple in this? That’s the whole joke?”

  I grimace, debating how much more to divulge. This is my problem. I don’t know how to talk along the surface of things, but I also don’t want to unearth the ugly stuff, over and over again, for people who are just passing through my life. It’s depleting. Like every time I dole out a kernel of my history to someone who’s not going to become a fixture in my life, a piece of me gets carried away, somewhere I can never get it back.

  You can’t untell someone your secrets. You can’t unsay those delicate truths once you learn you can’t trust the person you handed them to.

  Ashleigh sets my phone aside. “Look. If you don’t want to be friends, I’m not going to make you. We’ve worked together for over a year, and I’ve managed to learn startlingly little about you in that time, and I haven’t pressed, because I can tell when someone’s a closed book—”

  “I’m not a closed book,” I protest.

  “—but what I can’t figure out,” she says, “is why ask me to hang out now? If this is just some Good Samaritan shtick, I would’ve rather stayed home than go on a pity outing.”

  “It’s not a pity outing!” I say. “At least not on my end. And I’m sorry I didn’t make more of an effort to get to know you up front. It wasn’t you.”

  She gives me a pointed look.